Raymond Bitar: Founder of Full Tilt Poker

Raymond Bitar is the co-founder of Tiltware, LLC which runs
Full Tilt Poker. Bitar, under his position of CEO, helped build
Full Tilt Poker into the second largest online poker company in
the world. His story doesn't end there though.

After a thorough investigation, the police discovered that
Bitar had been taking Full Tilt Poker customer's deposited funds
and was using them for his own personal benefit. His scheme
devastated Full Tilt's customers, costing them over $390
million.

Foundation of Tiltware and Full Tilt Poker

Bitar started playing poker with his friends at the young age
of twelve, excelling at the game and always having a passion for
it. When he turned sixteen, Bitar started trading on the Pacific
Stock Exchange where he served as a market maker for several
years before moving on.

With his day trading experience, Bitar teamed up with another
stock trading company where he became the head of his own office
branch. Through this position, Bitar was introduced to Chris
Ferguson, a professional poker player that he had always looked
up to. Together, Ferguson and Bitar teamed up to discuss the
possibilities of Full Tilt Poker.

Bitar's goal was to create a user friendly site with an
improved user interface. He wanted to make sure the site used
advanced technology and enhanced graphics to give it an edge
over its competitors. The unique selling point of Fill Tilt
Poker was that players had an opportunity to play against real
professional poker players.

With Ferguson's help, Bitar gathered eight additional
professional players to represent the Full Tilt Poker Team
including Phil Ivey, Clonie Gowen, Howard Lederer, John Juanda,
Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, Erick Lindgren, and Phil Gordon. The
site's motto was "Learn, Chat, and Play with the Pros".

Tiltware, LLC officially announced the launch of Full tilt
Poker in Las Vegas during the 2004 World Series of Poker. Bitar
set an initial budget of $5 million and the company flourished,
quickly catching up with sites that had been around since the
early 1990s. During this time, Bitar lived in California and was
the CEO of the company.

In 2006, the United States announced the Unlawful Internet
Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) which restricted transactions
from US players to online gambling sites. Because of this, most
online gambling sites were forced to close their doors to US
customers.

Realizing how detrimental that could be to Full Tilt Poker's
revenue, Bitar decided to continue allowing US customers to play
on the site. Since options were limited for US customers, many
of them headed over to Full Tilt and became loyal customers to
the site.

Leader of the Ponzi Scheme

Bitar's decision to welcome US customers came back to bite
him on April 15th, 2011 when the US government seized Full
Tilt's domain name. Bitar and his team had to work out a deal
with the Department of Justice agreeing that they could regain
the use of their domain name if they stopped catering to US
customers and returned all funds back to them immediately.

This is when things started going horribly for Bitar. After
months of customers waiting for their refunds, a scandal
emerged. It became obvious that Bitar and some of his associates
had been using customer's deposits to pay substantial salaries
to their employees and sizeable dividends to investors. Bitar,
himself, had put aside $24 million of the stolen money under his
name in a foreign bank account. Full Tilt Poker had gotten to
the point where they had taken so much money from customers that
they were unable to successfully pay them back.

He and co-conspirators had secretly been tapping into
customer accounts, where poker players thought they had safely
deposited their winnings. As a direct result of Bitar's actions,
Full Tilt owed $390 million to players around the world.
PokerStars eventually agreed to purchase Full Tilt Poker for
$500 million dollars so that their customers could get back the
funds owed to them.

Bitar was charged on accounts of money laundering and bank
fraud and was sentenced to up to 65 years in prison. Two years
later, in April of 2013, he agreed to pay a $40 million fine in
a plea bargain deal, because he was in desperate need of heart
transplant. Bitar was then released from prison and he's now
under house arrest and not expected to live more than a few
years.